Patent lunacy defense — Microsoft reportedly has filed two patents covering certain aspects of RSS, Really Simple Syndication. Dave Winer is outraged. Nick Bradbury sagely says "Not so fast". I don't have the inside scoop on this yet, but here is what I think is happening.

Judge: Can't link to Webcast if copyright owner objects — A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it. — U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction …

The Venice Project: YouTube slayer? — Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis may not be household names, but the products they've created in the past, Kazaa and Skype, certainly are. The team of entrepreneurs is about to bring another product to market dubbed, "The Venice Project."

Why Doesn't CafePress Use Flash? — There are many sites that sell customized casino chips (just do a search), but we haven't found any that have an online design tool to allow you to create the chip itself. TheChipLab has take the extra step and has created a very nice Flash tool for designing your own casino-grade chip.

DDoS Attack Targets CafePress.com — CafePress.com, which provides online stores for thousands of blogs and web sites, has been hit with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) which has disrupted service for many of its merchants during the critical final shopping days before Christmas.

French court favors personal privacy over piracy searches — PARIS: A French court has ruled that music companies and other copyright holders cannot conduct unrestrained Internet monitoring to find pirates. — The decision, which could leave record companies open to lawsuits in France …

Abbey Corps — One thing that I kind of like about Rocketboom is that I have never — done any press releases. I also dont have an email list; Until now, I've always — just fielded the incoming. I'm not against that kind of outreach, it's just — interesting that there has never been any.

Bad Sinatra — Jonathan Schwartz has a problem. Me. I read his blog today, starting with the most recent post and eventually landing on one a few days ago about the resurgence of the thick client. Let me weigh in thusly : what a load of s**t this is. When Sun leadership starts moving away …

Toshiba's SED TV a no-show at electronics show — Toshiba's long-awaited SED TV will not be appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show in January after all. — Televisions with SED, which stands for surface conduction electron emitter display, will provide a better picture than LCD …

Microsoft confirms first Windows Vista vulnerability — MSRC Blog: We are closely monitoring developments related to a public posting of proof of concept code targeting an issue with the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem. The PoC reportedly allows for local elevation of privilege on Windows 2000 SP4 …

World of Origami still unfolding — Get ready for Origami take two. While Microsoft's minitablet effort may not be quite where the software maker had hoped, the project is ready for another cameo. — This spring, Microsoft attracted huge buzz for the Origami prior to its launch …

The ZNF Festivus Update — Well, it's getting to be that time of year — No, not the Festival of Lights... The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is nearly upon us! However, being the holidays, Netgear has gifted me with an all-expense paid trip to Vegas plus $2k to blow on [showgirls and gambling] …

Kill two Windows servers with one Xserve — At its core, Xserve is a two-socket Core microarchitecture Xeon (Woodcrest) rack server. As I wrote in my review, in hardware design, Xserve lives up to market standards. Some touches, like the SAS/SATA drive bays, a PCI-X slot for existing expansion cards …

Verizon UTStarcom XV6800: the CDMA TyTn lives! — Holy crap, it's a Christmas miracle! Look what Santa Roc A Fella dropped in our laps this morning: shots of the CDMA HTC TyTn, courtesy of our new pal HTC Kid! About freaking time. Here we have UTStarcom XV6800 on Verizon, and this thing is seriously no slouch.

The seven top mobile and wireless trends for '07 — The top wireless trends that will emerge in 2007 — cheap smartphones and WiMax — wouldn't be possible without the two biggest stories of 2006 — The top mobile and wireless trends that will emerge in 2007 wouldn't be possible without …

XBox up on downloads — Amazon digital video sales are slow — Though a box office failure, Warner Bros.' 'Poseidon' is selling well as a high-def download through Microsoft's Xbox Live. — In a topsy-turvy year for the digital download biz, a videogame service in just a few million homes …

Google guru prepares for internet evolution — Internet guru Vint Cerf tells the BCS's Brian Runciman about Google's strategy and gives his opinion about developments in the IT industry — Vint Cerf is Google's chief web evangelist, but is perhaps better known as one of the founding fathers of the internet.